Original Story Published by: Staff Writer for Fortune
Photo Source: ©Fortune
(Above) Abebe Aemro Selassie, director of the IMF's African Department.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently announced the world will see a slowdown in growth in the current fiscal year. This is despite estimates for Sub-Saharan Africa pointing to growth. Ethiopia is one of the few countries projected to enjoy a robust increase in its GDP. MANAGING EDITOR TAMRAT G. GIORGIS sat down with Abebe Aemro Selassie, director of the IMF's African Department, at the IMF headquarters in Washington, DC to discuss what lies ahead for African countries and Ethiopia.
Fortune: The outlook for the global economy brings growth down by 0.3 percentage points, while the outlook for Africa is up by 0.3 percentage points. What is missing here?
It is not so much missing. Africa’s growth is not correlated with what goes on globally. The main channel through which global growth tends to affect the region is commodity prices, of course. If we have much more pronounced swings in global growth, then you would see an effect in those countries in the region that have closely integrated into the global economy.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, what we have seen is a recovery from the sharp slump in commodity prices from 2014 to 2016. I will note that we had, at least for a little while, two distinct trends in the region.
To read the full article, visit Fortune.
Related
